-
Hannah with her excellent blog about connections week...

Sooooo. Connections week. Well it’s been a joy, and now I want to sleep for a very long time. But I can’t because I’ve got to be up at 6.30 on Monday morning to go to college. Rubbish. I was going to work through the days in order, but I can’t because they’ve all melded into one giant Connections day...

Well, we were all given an aggression makeover, because in the 17th century, we’re all pretty nasty characters, and we couldn’t be nasty to each other without feeling bad about it. Soooo we played Ratchet, Screwdriver a game that’s been banned at Yew Tree for about 4 years. It’s basically a more extreme version of Master and Servant, but you can restrain your partner in any way you want. Yeah, no idea why it was banned. Everyone loved it, and it sorted out our aggression problems. After that the 17th century cast spent some time working on scene 2, because we’d never got the atmosphere right, but its sooo much better now, and I’m a little bit scared of Ellie Moran all the way through.

I really enjoyed doing the character timeline, and I’ve found some things out about Marley that that make me feel a bit sorry for her. The 17th century is all about status and hierarchy, and it’s obvious from the beginning, but status is just as important in the 21st century, which gives it an edge, because you can see that they would be as ruthless as the 17th century if they had to. And that’s awful because they’re just like us. Ooh and I need to say, go onnn Jack Davies for managing to be harsh, and insane when playing Liam, because he’s the least harsh person in real life.

Aaand the Ensemble. I could leave it at that, because it doesn’t need me to describe how brilliant it is, and I’ll probably do a rubbish job anyway. So that’s all I’m going to say. IT IS BRILLIANT. It’s intense, and beautiful, and haunting, and just brilliant. And now that word has lost all meaning to me.

I’m starting to ramble, so I’ll leave it at that. It’s been lovely, as always. I liked pretending to be interested by an empty shop at the Hepworth. And I enjoyed my cheesy chips. I’m off back to sleep now. x

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Chloe's Leavers Blog - finally :)

-
  Please excuse how this was written, I do a very silly drama school course, and I haven’t had to write more than my name in 9 months. I’m sat in my silly dorm bed writing me this on my DSA laptop (a win for the mentally ill girlies), realising how utterly bad my ability to Words has become. Anyway.. Leaving YTYT was one of the oddest experiences of my life, and yet, I don’t remember it at all. I’d spent the last few years, waving off some of my closest friends as they went on to conquer their dreams, in a tearful circle, yet all I have is a fuzzy memory and a video saved in an instagram highlight. I’d sell a kidney to try and bring back that experience, to do my final show unclouded by new medication and intrusive thoughts, but as that isn’t possible, I thought I’d finally write my leavers blog, even if it is a year late. I started Yew Tree in 2017, as a way to explore drama outside of the agonising GCSE setting, and across the years, it became a lifeline for me, providing confidence,
Read more

Arwen's Leavers blog

-
I made a start writing this leaver’s blog when I was on a bloody needed holiday over a month ago, on the glorious Isle of Islay in Scotland. I’m re-writing it now, because I think it was naff to be honest. And I’m not in the same mindset as I was then. Also I might have had a few too many drams of whisky whilst writing it there, so there’s that. A line I’ll keep from it however is: “How am I meant to do justice and summarise in my writing the enormity of an impact that Yewtree has had on me these last 5-ish years?” How can I articulate all the skills that I've learnt and developed? The experiences I’ve had? There’s so much, where and what do I start on? So I’ll do just that, and put some of the skills I’ve learnt into use: “You can’t be a creative, a critic, and an editor at the same time” But in fairness - I don’t think I could share and articulate all those things. And I’m not sure that I want to, they’re for me. I can’t put that expectation on myself. The past year I’ve felt as
Read more

Celebrating the past in the present...

-
  Next year Yew Tree Youth Theatre will be 30 years old.   We haven’t quite decided how we will celebrate - any suggestions would be gratefully received. No doubt there will be some nostalgic perambulating down memory lane and some haphazard but joyous celebrating of three decades of creativity we have shared.   Some variation of those two themes would feel fitting. This blog however is something different. This blog is a celebration of the present of those who attended YTYT in the past. Alumni, graduates, previous members – I can never seem to find the right term – but whatever word is chosen I know for sure they are part of the fabric of the youth theatre and I’m grateful to have known all of them, mainly because I have learnt so much from them.   I also can’t put a number on how many people have spent significant time with YTYT over the last 29 years.   I know we started with a group of 8 and now have about 80 members, I know at our peak just before COVID we had about 130 young pe
Read more